My First Ayahuasca Experience | Fear, Forgiveness, and Coming Back
I usually plan these standalone episodes more than this.
I think through what I want to say, trim the fat, and try to make it cleaner before I sit down at the table.
This one was different.
I recorded this the day after my first ayahuasca ceremony because I wanted to document it before the details started disappearing. So this is not a polished guide, a recommendation, or me pretending to be some psychedelic guru.
It is a personal story about walking into something I was genuinely scared of, trying to let go of control, and having one of the most overwhelming experiences of my life.
In This Episode
My first ayahuasca ceremony
Fear before taking psychedelics
The room, mats, candles, guides, and setup
Setting an intention
The idea of “the medicine”
Purging, crying, and release
Trying not to control the experience
Visuals, colors, and overwhelming thoughts
Heightened hearing and the power of music
Feeling connected to everything
Gratitude, forgiveness, and family
The fear of not coming back
Loving reality again
Coming back to normal life
Before the Ceremony
I knew this was coming for about three months, and I was nervous the entire time.
I have done psychedelics before, but usually I want to be with people I know and trust or by myself. This was different. I was walking into a room with strangers, guides, mats on the floor, buckets nearby, blankets, water, and the very real possibility of throwing up in front of everyone.
Which, as activities go, is not my first choice.
But I had heard enough about ayahuasca to know that it had changed people’s lives. I did not know what it would do for me. I just knew I was scared, curious, and already too far into it to pretend I was not going.
Drinking the Medicine
They called it medicine, which is the right word for the way the ceremony was framed.
We sat in a circle. Everyone talked about their intention. Mine was pretty simple: I wanted to understand more about myself and see what the experience had to show me.
Right up until the moment we drank it, I was close to leaving.
Not because I did not want the experience, but because I did. That was the scary part. I knew I was about to hand over control to something I could not explain, and there is always that tiny fear with psychedelics: what if I do not come back the same?
Then we drank it.
And waited.
When It Started
At first, I was just sitting there.
Then suddenly, I was there.
The best way I could describe it in the episode was a mix of Willy Wonka’s tunnel, Rainbow Road from Mario Kart, and being inside the control center of my own brain.
That is not a clean explanation.
There is not a clean explanation.
It was color, movement, geometry, memory, thought, sound, emotion, fear, comfort, and total sensory overload all happening at once. Every thought opened another thought. Every question created ten more questions. It was beautiful and too much and impossible to manage.
Then I remembered the advice someone gave before we started:
Just breathe.
That helped more than anything.
Letting Go
The more I tried to control it, the harder it got.
The more I let go, the more it softened.
I kept telling myself, “You are okay. Everything is okay. You have everything you need.”
And eventually that became the center of it.
Not that everything in life is easy. Not that everything makes sense. Not that nothing bad has happened.
Just that in that moment, I was okay.
That was enough.
Music During the Ceremony
The music was unreal.
It was coming out of a small Bluetooth speaker, but it felt like the best sound system in the world. Every song felt enormous. Every voice, drum, melody, and change in the arrangement felt like it had weight.
I have always loved music, but this made me feel it differently.
It was not just something playing in the background. It was part of the experience. It was guiding the room, shaping the emotion, and giving the whole thing somewhere to go when my brain had too much happening at once.
At moments, it felt like being surrounded by a choir of a thousand voices.
Not bad for a tiny speaker in a living room.
Gratitude and Forgiveness
After the most intense part started to calm down, the emotional part came in.
That was the part I did not expect in the same way.
I started thinking about people in my life: my kids, my parents, my brother, my sister, my ex-wife, friends, people I work with, people I had been angry with, people who had helped me when life was bad.
And I felt this wave of gratitude.
Then forgiveness.
Not clean, easy, greeting-card forgiveness. More like the kind where you look at the anger you have been carrying and realize how heavy it is. You start asking why you are still holding it. You start seeing people as flawed humans instead of fixed villains.
That does not erase anything.
But it changes the grip.
The Purge
I did not throw up.
Other people did.
And hearing it during the ceremony was not gross in the normal way. It felt like people were getting something out of them. Not just physically, but emotionally. Like they were purging pain, memory, grief, fear, or whatever their body and mind needed to release.
That is hard to explain without sounding dramatic.
But the whole thing was dramatic.
That is kind of the point.
Coming Back
By the end, I was grateful for the experience and also very grateful to come back to normal life.
That was one of the biggest things I took from it.
Reality is good.
The regular world is good.
Kids, friends, family, work, music, a house, a drink, a conversation, a stupid TV show after a huge emotional experience. All of it felt precious.
I came back with this overwhelming feeling that we are lucky to be here at all.
I do not know why any of this exists. I do not know why I was born when I was born, to the family I was born into, with the people I have around me.
But I get to be here.
I get to love people.
That felt like enough.
Quick Takeaways
This is a personal story, not advice.
Ayahuasca was the most powerful psychedelic experience I have ever had.
The fear before the ceremony was real.
Letting go mattered more than trying to control it.
Breathing helped when the experience became overwhelming.
The visuals were intense, colorful, geometric, and almost impossible to explain.
The music felt physically and emotionally huge.
The experience brought up gratitude, forgiveness, grief, love, and fear.
Coming back to normal life felt like a gift.
I do not fully understand what happened, but I am glad I documented it while it was fresh.
